Let the Good Times Roll: 1 Million More Americans in Poverty in 2004

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
So, it's seems Tubes' wifie is a commie. Ehhhhxcellent.

Us commies are the only people in touch with reality

[Saras]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Poor is when you can't pay all your bills.

Like Donald Trump once couldn't?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by VetLegion
What I want to know is this: a man is in the hospital and needs expensive surgery to survive. He doesn't have the funds to pay for it. What do they do with him? Throw him out? Let him die on the bed?

It's all God's will:

" Thou art very poor: who made thee so ? If thine own negligence, laziness, improvidence, unthriftiness, rash engagements, thou hadst reason to bear that burthen which thou hast pulled upon thine own shoulders...If the mere oppression and injury of others, thou shalt the more comfortably run away with this cross, because thine own hand hath not been guilty of imposing it. "

Bishop J. Hall 'The Balm of Gilead'

Unsurprisingly, he was a bishop of Calvinist sympathies.

Thankfully his was not the only point of view, but it was certainly a popular one in Puritan America and in England of the Reformation and after, and Calvinist Scotland.

"Men are so busy examining the poor about their estate and their desert, that they can find no leisure to open their purses or relieve their wants."

Robert Allen, 'The Odorifferous Garden of Charity', publ. 1603

No change there, then.

If anyone is interested in how the working poor survive, then I can recommend Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Nickel and Dimed':

Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour?

To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

'Nickel and Dimed' reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.

http://www.nickelanddimed.net/

[Mrs. Tuberski]

To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Most jobs have exhausting and physical efforts. This is not new. Now granted the foodworker and housekeeper are not paid as well as ur dr or dentist, but they both do the same if not more work. Though i see this comparison as apples and oranges truth be known the same amount of time and effort is going into the work and task at hand. If you ask me this country spends way to much money on fantasy and tv land. Were the hell was it written the athletes and movie stars should make millions for entertainment purpose. You have folks working their asses off for minimum wage and have the sports stars and movie folks demanding 30 million for one film and or one season How insane is this??? I will tell you very, cause it is you the consumer that pays that salary, and continue to allow this insanity by continuing to pay the outrageous prices for movie tickets and tickets to the shows etc.

[:) Smiley]

Ironically though its the entertainment industry that keeps the US from sinking into complete third world status, as almost all other industries are uncompetitive without subsidies.

It too is unsustainable, since US consumption is fueled by money borrowed from exporting countries so we can buy more of their exports.

A small scale analogy would be a bar that lets customers run up a tab so they can keep giving the bar business. Deadbeat customers eventually get banned from the bar. Likewise, cheap Chinese merchandise in Walmarts probably won't be cheap thirty years from now when the Chinese domestic market is big enough to eat up all the demand.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by VetLegion
What I want to know is this: a man is in the hospital and needs expensive surgery to survive. He doesn't have the funds to pay for it. What do they do with him? Throw him out? Let him die on the bed?

I guess I'll find out when the time comes....

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Originally posted by VetLegion
What I want to know is this: a man is in the hospital and needs expensive surgery to survive. He doesn't have the funds to pay for it. What do they do with him? Throw him out? Let him die on the bed?

There are way to many solutions to this. First you try to exhaust all possibilties for payment. Social services for the hospital gets invloved. The goverment is broguht into play for medicaid or medicare. to help with the costs. I am not saying that it doesnt happen, but it is very rare that a person is brought in to a hospital that is left to die cause they cannot pay.
There are surgeons that have to take these cases and do the procedure even if they will not be paid for it. Drs do not work like lawyers. Most lawyers have a choice to to do pro bono cases, most physicians do not have the luxury. In complete answer the patient will be taken care of and not left to die.

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Transplants are a bit different, The procedures ae much more expensive and more involved. There are a lot of trusts that are involved that are available to help a patient with costs if the only match is for a person with no insurance. By this time that a transplant is needed there is already some type of goverment insurance in place. The healthcare workers will not allow a good organ that was donated to be wasted because the reciepent cannot pay.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Smiley
A small scale analogy would be a bar that lets customers run up a tab so they can keep giving the bar business. Deadbeat customers eventually get banned from the bar. Likewise, cheap Chinese merchandise in Walmarts probably won't be cheap thirty years from now when the Chinese domestic market is big enough to eat up all the demand.

while we simply can not keep this up, there is no way the Chinese home market will be able to absorb their production. I was listening to a Nucor guy on C-Span eariler a few days ago talking about how China was projected to have triple the current world excess steel capacity in the next 5 years.

[:) Smiley]

USA currently uses 25% of world's resources and has about 300 million people.

China has 4 times the number of people who want to live like Americans.

[Dauphin]

Live like Americans? Surely they want to be Americans!

[Vanguard]

The poverty rate is always a trailing indicator at the beginning of an economic expansion...

Lol. It's also a leading indicator of a country in decline. So what?

The poverty rate has risen for four straight years, yet as I recall you have been touting the economic expansion for all of that time. How far behind does this "trailing indicator" follow? A decade? Two? If you ask me, it looks more like a counter-indicator---- at least for Bush's economic policies.

In fact, the rise in the poverty rate is largely a direct result of the Republican party's deficit financed tax cuts for the wealthy. This "policy" (I hardly dare dignify it with the term) is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich. Which drives some of the middle class into poverty, thus increasing the poverty rate.

Eventually it will destroy the middle class and consequently the US economy. But that probably won't happen until Bush is out of office and can blame it on someone else. And you, no doubt, will be there to help him do it.

[Saras]

American notions of "poverty" disgust me. You guys have no clue what poverty is.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Us commies are the only people in touch with reality

I'm not sure who lives in Plato's Cave of ignorance -- communists, or capitalists.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dauphin
Live like Americans? Surely they want to be Americans!

Really not that many people want to be Usians.